Expat Preppers: Yo No Habla Español, Puta

[insert drunken exclamation point standing on its head] Hola, amigos! [allow drunken question mark to join his friend] Que tal?  Mamita yo se que tu no te me va’ a quitar. (¡Duro!)  A ella le gusta la gasoline. (¡Dame mas gasoline!)

What? I live in Texas, okay?  All the Spanish I know comes from the 107.1 FM Latino Mix.  Let’s check out some of the oh so useful words I have under my belt:

limousine
babe
pussy
adrenaline
gasoline
candy
bitch

…do I even need to continue?  I can just imagine the kind of conversations I’m going to be able to have once I get to Honduras.

¡Hola! ¿Tu gata llene su limusina con gasolina? ¿Perras con dulce coño te dan un subidón de adrenalina?  ¡ Me gusta panocha!  (Trust me, you do NOT want to Google Translate those sentences.)

While this will no doubt make me endlessly popular with sleazy shirtless dudes in bars, I don’t think that the majority of natives will appreciate my abilities.  So what is a gringa with a dictionary limited to Daddy Yankee songs to do?

I really do want to learn more Spanish than those esteemed words that make up the choruses of really filthy reggaeton songs, I swear!  I want to be able to ask really cool things like whether they suggest I get the beef or the chicken, or where the bucket to toss my soiled toilet paper is.  You know, the sort of stuff you need outside of a red light district.  So I started doing the lessons at Spanish Podcast 101.  It’s… interesting.  If by “interesting” you really mean as boring as hell.  So far I’ve learned more from Daddy Yankee.  But I’m going to keep trying, because there’s nothing quite as sad as listening to people make fun of you in a language you don’t understand.  Trust me, I’m a teacher working in a neighborhood that is the bastard child of a ghetto and a barrio.  I know.

This is how most of my middle school Latino
students learned to speak spanish, anyway.

In the meantime, at least I am fully capable of asking if I can put my gasoline in your ho’s tank.

Yeah… Maybe I should buy a phrase book.  I don’t suppose anyone has some language learning suggestions for me?